


Broken Toys

by De Orakle (Delphi)



Series: Paranoid Android [1]
Category: Once a Thief (TV)
Genre: Drama, First Meetings, Interviews, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-07-01
Updated: 1999-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-11 15:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/113965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/De%20Orakle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Agency job interview strays from the routine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Toys

**Author's Note:**

> Exact date of publication unknown.

If you had asked me back on that day, I would have admitted that for me, the highlight of my job is playing with the new agents. Actually, I would have said nothing of the sort. But alone in a dark room with my back to the cameras and the bugs disabled, I might have thought it.

You see, when working for an organization, or rather, an _organism_ like the Agency, every single cell has to fulfill its task in perfect cohesion lest a cancer form. When our shadowy government organization takes some unfortunate soul from their safe sidewalk lives and shoves them into the middle of the freeway, they're brought to me to set their loyalties straight. I've backed our most ruthless operatives up against the wall. I've reduced our most soulless assassins to quivering heaps on the geometric-patterned carpet of my office. And I've done it with a smile.

Still, the killers, thieves, and spies are the easiest to control. They're what we call our "mushroom" employees: kept in the dark and fed shit. No, the dangerous ones are the individuals with keys, those who can see the big picture, with one hand on the Agency's files and the other on the door.

When the head position of Section 4 Research opened up due to...an unfortunate accident, I was called in to interview the prospective replacements. The qualifications were specific enough: genius level intelligence quotient, low emotional quotient, easily intimidated, socially dysfunctional, someone who might vanish without being missed. Despite the profile I had prepared and my afternoon full of basement-dwellers, I was still taken rather by surprise when our final candidate, Nathaniel Joshua Muckle, walked into my office. And I'd like to think it takes a lot to surprise a man like me.

He had been kept waiting for half an hour, a customary tactic to set him on edge. Picture the desired results times five. If nervous tension was a spark, then this scarecrow had stuck his finger into a wall socket. This shy edginess, in conjunction with his short-sleeved brown plaid shirt tucked neatly into his pressed khakis, and his spiky brown hair, gave him the look of a little boy on the first day of Grade One. Of course, with his jerky, silent movements and quickly darting eyes, it was obvious that this little boy was on his way to the special class.

I stayed seated behind my desk, the centre of authority and power in the room from a psychological standpoint, as Nathan's hands wrung nervously together. I motioned for him to take a seat, and he collapsed onto the hard plastic chair with the least amount of grace imaginable, his long arms and legs bent at awkward angles. Sitting there silently, I sized him up, gauging his response to the unnerving quiet. His quick, wide eyes darted right, left, right again, and he leaned forward to warily stare back at me. One look into his deep brown puppy dog eyes framed by those flickering eyelashes, and I felt a pang of disappointment, realizing that someone had already done my job for me. This toy had been broken a long time ago.

His gaze darted to every corner in the room before... "She's watching, isn't she?" he hissed to me, covering his mouth with his hand.

"Pardon?" I asked, startled. It wasn't often one of my characters strayed from the script.

"She. The woman. The redhead. She's one of them, and they're watching us."

I almost laughed then. This guy was more perceptive than I'd previously imagined. A pity, since that raised his danger status threefold.

"One of who?" I had to ask. In the Agency, knowledge is akin to a live grenade. I covered my own mouth, playing along. I wasn't naive enough to think that my office wasn't bugged. I just knew that the Director could find out every word we said, no matter the precautions taken.

"The bug kingdom. You know what I mean, don't you?" Those wide eyes were gleaming fervently at me, so dreadfully earnest and pleading that it almost invoked some long-buried sense of sympathy in me. I hadn't felt that sort of comic disturbance since the time I had to play marriage counsellor to the Cleaners.

And yet, yet...something about this quirky man was as strangely compelling as the opening chapter of my first abnormal psychiatry textbook. I had already planned to hire him on his credentials alone, but now I had a genuine interest in discovering what fuelled this...unique mind.

I nodded solemnly to Nathan, made a show of glancing around, and then moved quickly around my desk with feigned urgency. I stood beside his chair, laying my hand on his shoulder through instinct alone. He was oddly hot through his rough shirt, and the absurd question of the softness of his skin flickered ever so briefly through my mind. Brevity aside, the thought startled me to the point of jerking back my hand in a most undignified manner, and startled Nathan into leaping to his feet, nearly knocking the chair over as he did so.

We froze, scant centimetres apart, and I remember how loud his breathing sounded. Strange, not the memory, but that I took note of it. I've been told I have the nasty habit of forgetting that people other than myself actually exist as living human beings. But it's still clear in my mind: his hot breath coming lightly against my cheek, and the slightest, simplest thought of warmth I experienced before I mentally checked an "ignorance of personal space" box on his list of social dysfunction.

I leaned that fraction nearer until my lips nearly brushed against his ear. I spoke, and I saw the short hairs along the edge of his hairline stiffen; I inhaled and registered the unlikely yet apt scent of bananas.

"You've got the job. You're in, but it's imperative that you watch your back. The bug-people are everywhere, and if rumour is to be believed, their queen has ties to this place. Talk to no one on the outside."

I considered him for a moment, and I almost considered him by name. But not quite. That would come later.

"If you need anything at all, come to me and no one else. Got it?"

And with that simple play of "You and I against the world," I had gained his trust and reaffirmed my own. In hindsight and honesty, I would have to admit that I wanted to see him again—to cut away the casing to see what made him tick. But while hindsight is 20/20, my glances at honesty are most often from my peripheral vision.

Nathan took a step back and smiled such a sickeningly sweet, hopeful smile. His eyes met mine, unblinking—eyes that burned with a desperate, lost intensity. And with a quick motion that I should have seen coming, he grabbed my arm with surprising strength and a breaking whisper. "Thank you, I won't let you down."

Somehow I managed to breathe and dismiss him from my office, roughly in that order. From my mirrored paperweight, I watched him walk down the hall, looking over his shoulder every few seconds, presumably for insectoid Venuvians nesting in the potted plants. He twitched when Denver and Canning strode past him. And even when he was out of my line of sight, he still existed in my mind. I had to at least admit that I was slightly intrigued by him, and even more intrigued because I wasn't sure why.

The game took an unexpected turn when that broken toy was placed in my hand. Broken toys are interesting things, you see. They can have missing parts and jagged edges. You can't always be sure which parts are still whole, and they can hurt you if you're not careful. But I've learned, I've learned...broken toys can also be the most fun to play with.

Maybe the highlight of my job is still putting the new agents in their place, but as they say, "All work and no play..."

Everybody needs a hobby.


End file.
